“You can have little view here, except the ulterior of the fort,” Mervyn said, as they strolled along. So disillusioned, so disaffected was he that he was quite open to the fact that a walk with Arabella along the ramparts was but a device of Mrs. Annandale’s, and of no interest in itself.
“I have a glimpse of the mountains above the stockade, and I am breathing the sun, not the fire.”
“Very true,” assented Mervyn. “The sun is a welcome visitor—a rare honor.”
Arabella had a fair share of pride, of enterprise in a way. Too inexperienced to understand her aunt’s schemes, too affectionate to divine them, she only realized that this young man was holding his head higher than became him in her company, and that her aunt seemed to regard him as somehow rated superior to her station, and incidentally to her. She had an aptitude for ascendency—she could not look up. Her neck, too, was stiff. And she did not find Mervyn amusing on his pedestal. Moreover, if he valued his peace he must come down.
“How little did I ever think in England I should some day walk along the rampart of a fort in America with you,”—she turned her suave and smiling eyes upon him, and he almost melted for the nonce.
“None of us can read the future,” he rejoined at random. And straight the unlucky recollection of the gypsy’s prophecy smote him anew.
The men in the galleries of the barracks, and others pitching horse-shoes in lieu of quoits near the stable precincts, all marked the lady with interest and admiration, a rare apparition indeed in these far wilds, and noted without wonder the prideful port of the captain-lieutenant, in such charming company.
“A-pea-cockin’ along loike a major-general, be-dad!” the warder in the tower vouchsafed in a whisper to the sentry below.
She could not account for Mervyn’s lofty and distant air—he, who used to be, who seemed indeed but yesterday, an unassertive and modest youth.
“Are there any fish in this river?” she asked as passing one of the embrasures she saw above the cannon the steely gleam of the Keowee, stretching out to the defiles of the mountains, which were splendidly purple and crowned with opalescent mists that shimmered with an intense white glister when they caught the sheen of the westering sun.